Governor takes a leisurely look at Kitts Point

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

The state is making plans for preservation of the 985-acre Kitts Point property it is acquiring, where the creek flows into the St. Mary's and Potomac rivers.

It's also where Beachville Road ends at the St. Inigoes recreation area, the location of a boat ramp where O'Malley arrived on a 21-foot Maryland Natural Resources Police boat that afternoon to meet his small motorcade.

"He took a boat ride there to check it out," Christine Hansen, a deputy press secretary for the governor, said this week.

Randy Plummer, a 21-year-old waterman from Ridge, already was there, enjoying the company of his friends when the governor joined them.

"There were only two cars. They came 10 minutes before the boat," Plummer said the next day. "It was just him and two cops [on the boat]. I knew who he was, just because I've seen him in the paper. There were probably 10 of us down there, because of the nice day."

The group generally was content with drinking Budweiser beer, Plummer said, but the governor had an odd-looking bottle of his own. An earlier formal celebration at Historic St. Mary's City, where the governor spoke, reportedly had included dispensing bottles of a 375th anniversary commemorative ale.

"He just sat around and had a couple drinks with us," Plummer said. "We just sat down and talked about what we should do with Kitts Point. We said something about hunting, something about keeping it the way it is and something about putting some trails down there. If it was up to me, I'd open it up to hunters."

The 30-minute meeting was "more conversation" than drinking, Plummer said, which might have been for the better, given the taste of what the governor was drinking.

"I took a shot with him of what he brought," Plummer said. "I think it was some kind of ale. It was definitely nasty, whatever it was."

Andrew Burnett, 18, of Dameron said he stuck to drinking Pepsi during the governor's impromptu descent on the gathering.

"It wasn't what I expected to see [while] sitting there partying. We thought we were about to be in trouble," Burnett said. "Everybody was surprised."

Other than what O'Malley brought to the gathering, his visit was well received. "He was just like a normal guy," Plummer said.

"He was really down to earth. He said he was tired of the crowds," Burnett said. "It was pretty cool to meet the governor."

jwharton@somdnews.com